Free concert of music shaped by the valley to be performed in Walsden

New jazz quintet Urorobo play their first concert on Thursday, September 15, at The Mill in Walsden, doors open at 7.30pm.

Featuring young musicians in constant demand on the UK jazz circuit, and led by Calderdale resident, composer, saxophonist and poet Keith Jafrate, they will be playing music most of which was composed in Waldsen, and much of which was actually derived from the local landscape, through a variety of photographic and numeric processes.

This is a free concert to launch the quintet, and its style of music is new to The Mill. A live recording will be made of proceedings, and a CD and online release of the music is planned for early 2023.

Uroboro are Laura Cole on keyboard, Anton Hunter on guitar, Johnny Hunter on drums, John Pope on bass and Keith Jafrate on saxophone.

Uroboro was originally formed as a trio in 2014 by Keith Jafrate, to improvise and to play his compositions, with Anton Hunter on guitar and Johnny Hunter on drums. The line-up changed in 2019, with pianist Laura Cole and bassist John Pope joining Keith. With the two versions of the trio performing quite different versions of the same compositions, it was hard to resist the idea of bringing everyone together to see what would happen, so the new band merges both versions of the trio to form a quintet. They play what could perhaps be described as a kind of narrative, landscape music, lyrical, beautiful and fierce, but which can also be funky and sinuous.